Following the success of Divergent, Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, et al return for Insurgent, the adaptation of the second novel in Veronica Roth’s dystopian YA series. With the heavy lifting of all that exposition taken care of in the first film, Insurgent moves well, provides a few new twists and considerably more action and spectacular CG effects.

It’s a tale of the lengths someone will got to to be great, and the lengths someone will go to to push someone to be great. Whiplash won three Oscars® this year – including Best Supporting Actor for J.K. Simmons for the role of Mr. Fletcher, the abusive instructor/conductor of the top-rated music school’s jazz band.

When Josh Trank was picked to helm the reboot of the Fantastic Four – on the strength of his found footage take on superpowered people, Chronicle – it was seen as a very good move by 20th Century Fox.

Then came the casting – and what a furor that caused! Now, we finally get our first look at Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Benjamin Grimm (Jamie Bell), Susan Storm (Kate Mara) and her brother, Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) – and see if all that noise was over nothing.

Although one of the joys of covering a film festival is the cool movies that you might never otherwise see, there are always a few that you have to see even when you know they will being getting some kind of mainstream release. Whiplash – which won both the Jury and Audience prizes at this year’s Sundance Festival, is one of those. And it is just as good as those awards would suggest it is.